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Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

nytimes.com

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Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#41

Post by epistasis »

jdpedrie wrote: post #16
doubleg72 wrote: post #12

Okay.. Gas car owners confronted a hard foe in Calgary this week too: frozen gas pumps.

The differences are a) you don't lose notable range in cold weather (and your car continues to reliably tell you your remaining range), and b) there's always another gas station a block down.

Yes, you do lose notable range in a gas car in cold weather:

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/coldweather.shtml

It's really interesting what sort of things are considered problems with EVs that just get ignored with gas cars. The dual standard is pretty interesting to observe.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#42

Post by auxym »

tambourine_man wrote: post #8

Yes, because combustion engines are also great at starting in freezing temperatures. If you manage to get it going, it's fine after a few minutes. But the cold start is a pain.

I don't know, I live in eastern Canada, modern cars don't seem to have much of an issue on the handful of -20 to -25 Celsius mornings we get every year, as long as the battery is in good shape.

Even the 2007 Yaris we had up to 2018 never had an issue (after I replaced the dying battery).

Now the -40 C weather they've been having in the prairies recently is a different issue, one I can happily say I don't have any experience with.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#43

Post by NDizzle »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #34

Let's put things in perspective. In Calgary, and many other cold cities, every apartment's outdoor parking lot has outlets where you plug in your ICE's block heater and battery blanket. Without them, you probably won't start your car this morning. When I lived in Calgary, I sometimes had to spray a can of ether into the carburetor to get my car started.

Yes. And then when you left, did you have an accurate gauge of exactly how far you could travel? Did you have stops along the way to add fuel in a reasonable amount of time? Did you have reliable, strong heat in the cabin?

I want EVs to be there too, but they just aren't.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#44

Post by zdragnar »

wyldfire wrote: post #4

I'm not sure that this warrants such a generalization from the title. The article itself goes on to quote: > “This is not a categorical problem for electric vehicles,” he added, “because it has largely been sorted out in other places.” > ... Cold weather is likely to be less of an issue as companies update electric vehicles models. Even in the last few years, companies have developed capabilities that allow newer mod…

Tesla manual says you need to precondition the battery for upwards of an hour before fast charging in cold weather.

That's clearly not an option for the cars that are abandoned and dead because they couldn't charge.

It's also not just the one station that was an issue. One guy left his Tesla at the airport parking lot, came back after his trip, and had to pay to get it towed to a charger.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#45

Post by billy99k »

We should have pushed for hybrid cars. This way, we can build the infrastructure along-side our current gas stations and give people an incentive to buy them (increases range of gas powered cars). It would have been a win-win all around.

Instead, governments want to force us to all electric too early with nowhere near the proper infrastructure.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#47

Post by Waterluvian »

kci225 wrote: post #37
Waterluvian wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-50 is a different world compared to -5. But now I’m curious how an EV would handle being an outdoor car in -50 windchill.

Hey signed up just to answer this. We have had an EV in Saskatchewan for 2+ years now. We live on a farm and have a daily commute of about 40km. Other vehicle is a gas F150. The EV has been far and away the better vehicle in our bitter winters. Have not had one single issue. Heats up super quick. Yes when it minus 50 we lose half our range but still leaves us with 200km or so on the worst days. As far as charging in…

Thanks for taking the time to answer! This is both surprising and unsurprising. On paper, everything you say makes sense. But to see that it's true in practice is great news.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#48

Post by xyst »

tw04 wrote: post #6

90% of the complaints appear to be from folks who have no ability to charge at home. I would agree with the sentiment that if you have to drive any significant distance daily, and live in an apartment where you can’t charge at home, having an EV is going to be a giant pain and it might be a little too soon to go that route. I’d imagine we’re still several years away from having robust enough charging infrastructure a…

The real blunder in this country is the lack of viable alternative transportation options in a majority of the nation.

Visited NYC recently and didn’t need to rent a car. Primarily took the bus, ferry, and rail car/trains. In some cases I just walked from my hotel to the destination. Could have rented one of the e-bikes as well. Transportation costs for just 1 week were less than $100 (a quarter of this was because of LIRR usage). Didn’t have to deal with traffic, or some dumbass rear ending me because they weren’t paying attention. I could effectively multitask while traveling by alternative means.

Unpopular opinion: heavy investing in “EV infrastructure” is a waste of time and money.

Re: Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather

#49

Post by PaulHoule »

Waterluvian wrote: post #22
tambourine_man wrote: post #8

Yes, because combustion engines are also great at starting in freezing temperatures. If you manage to get it going, it's fine after a few minutes. But the cold start is a pain.

I think it depends on how cold is cold. They likely have different min temps before you start seeing issues. Though engine block heaters are also standard in cars where it gets cold so at some temperatures this is a “nowhere to plug the car in” problem for both kinds.

Not hard to add if your car doesn't have one. I've never needed a block heater in a car but I installed them on two tractors that we use to plow the driveway. My current tractor is this (particular) Diesel

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_Holland_TC30_HST...

but before that I struggled to get one of these

https://www.pinterest.com/marshallwoodyar/john-deere-tractor...

to start in the winter (even with the block heater) and probably killed it by switching it to a multi-viscosity oil when the straight 20 oil specified for it became almost impossible to get and could well be blamed for the hard starting.

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